Fiscal Year 2009 began on October 1,
2008 and ended on September 30, 2009. Economists and
politicians may bicker about when the economic downturn
technically began, but the magnitude of it certainly
became clear in
September and
October of2008.
So these statistics represent the Obama/Bush immigration
policy from the start of the
economic crisis. During this time period nearly 6
million Americans lost their jobs.

Many Americans, and certainly ourelites,
seem to think that immigration simply is a natural
economic process that will fluctuate with supply and
demand. The truth, however, is thatas long as America has a higher standard of living than the rest of the
world, there will be an
unlimited supply of people willing to come here.
And the number of immigrants coming here is determined
solely
by government policy.

Any sane policy would
reduce immigration as American unemployment rises.
But Washington is not doing it. In the post-Crash year
of 2009, the U.S. issued 1,130,818 green cards—anincrease, from
1,107,126 in 2008 and 1,052,415 in 2007. In contrast,
during the Great Depression from 1930-1939, we issued
only 699,375 during the entire decade.

The 2009 total is the fourth highest
number of green cards issued since 1914—behind 1990,
1991, and 2006. (And it is worth noting the bulk of the
green cards issued in 1990 and 1991 were not given to
new legal immigrants but to
illegal aliens granted amnesty in 1986—so in terms
of new arrivals, 2009 was actually higher.)

In
the first decade of this millennium, the U.S. issued a
total of 10,299,430 green cards—the highest number of
any decade in American history. This is over 3 million
more green cards issued over the entire forty year
period of 1930-1969.

You
can be sure that the Open Borders lobby will
crow about how we
only issued 144,034 employer-based green cards
in 2009—a decrease from 2008. But of that 1,130,818
green cards, 808,478 were given to working age
immigrants 20-64. All immigrants who get green cards are
eligible for work. So most of the 664,444 immigrants of
working age will be
competing against Americans for work.

But most immigrant workers only create economic growth
in so far as they lower labor costs for employers,
possibly causing them to further invest. This effect is
always much smaller than thejobs
and wages immigrants take from Americans, to say
nothing of
the government services spent on them. However, with
our record unemployment, even these marginal economic
benefits disappear.

And in 2009, as always, most of the legal immigrants are
low-skilled. Immigrants of exceptional ability, with
advanced degrees, or
investors make up a measly 8% of all immigrants
combined. No doubt this has much to do with the system`s
ongoing bias toward Third World immigrants through its“family
reunification” mechanism. Only 9.3% of all new green
cards went to Europeans. In contrast, 14.6% went to
Mexicans alone.

The obvious solution: a moratorium on immigration. And.
insofar as we have immigration, make it a bit more,
well,
diverse, by stopping Mexico and the Third World from
hogging the inflow.

But instead of doing this, the two major pieces of
immigration legislation currently proposed willincrease legal
immigration.

The
Gutierrez-Ortiz Comprehensive Immigration Reform for
America`s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 ("CIR
ASAP"), with
nearly 100 Democratic co-sponsors in the House, will
create at least 550,000 new work visas in guise of"recapturing"
imaginary unused visas from the last 20 years. It will
also create a new category to"prevent unauthorized migration." This will create 100,000 additional visas each year to the countries
where the most illegal aliens come from— namely Mexico,El
Salvador, and
Guatemala.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer and Lindsay Graham are
expected to introduce their own "Comprehensive
Immigration Reform" any day. When the text comes
out, you can be sure that there will many increases in
permanent legal immigration. But all we`ve seen up to
now is their
Washington Post Op Ed describing their principles.
They proposed a "rational system for
admitting lower-skilled workers."
However, these
"temporary" workers"who have
succeeded in the workplace, and contributed to their
communities over many years, the chance to earn a green
card" a.k.a. amnesty. [
The Right Way to Mend Immigration, Chuck
Schumer and Lindsay Graham,
Washington Post, March 19, 2010]

Government policy got us into our economic disaster. A
new government policy of reduced immigration is the only
way to get us out.